Always
by Mister Evil
Summary: Harry Potter as he copes with the fact that he is going to die. (Slight AU)
1. Chapter 1

When you're walking through the Forbidden Forrest at night, it gives you time to think...a little too much time, I'd say. All that I could hear was my own heartbeat right now, steady on over the sound of my feet crushing leaves and twigs.

Have you ever sat back and considered what you've really done with your life? I mean... _really_ thought about it. Do you think about how you stood in the background for most of your life? Or do you think about your mum? Your dad? Your uncle? I guess I would if I had them anymore.

Hermione, Ron...Mrs Weasley. Fred.

They were why I was doing this.

This wasn't for me, I think we all knew that from the start of this little endeavor. I was the chosen one, I was the saviour and if I turned away right now, all of their deaths would be for absolutely nothing. Was I ready to die?

I stopped at that and ran my fingers through my hair, watching as a few extra specks of dust and rock fell to the dirt floor beneath me. It was knotted and greasy as I sighed, I always thought I'd be a little older. I thought things would be different, that I'd have a family to surround me when I was good and ready.

How do you know when you're ready to die?

There wasn't a class, a book, or a potion to get you prepared. It was all in your mind, your thoughts. Everyone expected me to be brave, I had to be for them. I wasn't allowed to be selfish right now.

I started off again, wandering my way towards my own demise with a crease in my brow. What good is it being the chosen one if all you've been raised to do is...to die? Did my mum know that when I was born?

I stopped again at that, my feet and my brain were trying to stop me from doing the _one_ thing I was here to do but...I didn't quite want to do it.

A cold wind whistled through the brush and leaves around me so I slid my hands into my pockets, pulling my jacket closer. A round ball sat in my left pocket and I fingered it for a second, feeling the grooves as I pulled it out of my pocket.

Through the dim light and my dirty glasses, I saw my first snitch. It was the first I'd ever caught and I was so excited to have done something worthwhile. I could still hear the cheers and the screams of delight from the stands through the wind. _Everyone_ cheered for me and for once, I felt like I belonged somewhere. Hogwarts was my home. The first one I'd ever actually felt like I'd fit...and it was in danger right now. I gripped the orb a little tighter as I swallowed heavily.

 _I open at the close._

With a frown, I watched as those five words appeared across the snitch. They made almost no sense to me, so I wrote it off as another one of Dumbledore's little quirks, maybe these were supposed to comfort me as I faced my own death.

I glanced from the metal orb up to the trees in front of me, seeing a flickering light and sighed with a shaky breath. This is what it all had come down to, this moment. Everyone I'd ever loved or cared about was in danger right now.

I closed my eyes tightly for a second, bring the snitch close enough for me to feel the cold of the metal near my face. My fingers trembled, but I couldn't tell if they were from the adreanaline or the terror I felt flooding my limbs right now.

"I'm ready to die."

I sighed once more before I lowered my hand and watched with fascination as the metal shell fell away. I continued to stare while a solitary little black stone floated from the center and grabbed it gently. This had to be the Resurrection Stone...of course Dumbledore had it all along.

I closed my hand around it, holding a breath in to somehow try and breath slower. I closed my eyes and released the breath slowly. I knew I was about to do the exact opposite of what every children's story had ever said but...I wanted to see everyone. One last time.

My breath stopped in my chest when I'd opened my eyes once again to see that I wasn't alone anymore. Remus, Sirius, Mum, and Dad were here with me now. I almost ran for mum until I remembered that she wasn't really here, none of them were. They were just ghosts.

"You've been so brave, sweetheart." Her voice was just as I'd remembered but so sad.

"Why are you here? All of you." I swallowed heavily, trying to keep myself from crying as I glanced at all of the familar faces.

"We never left." My mother answered patiently.

"Does... Does it hurt? Dying?" I swallowed again. I thought I'd have been used to death by now but it seemed like I wasn't, I was just as scared and angry as I'd been when Sirius died.

"Quicker than falling asleep." Sirius was just as calm as mum had been but his voice and face kept that mischievous sparkle. I was actually grateful for it.

"You're nearly there, son." Dad's voice was different than how I'd imagined hearing it but it felt just as familiar as mum's.

"I'm sorry." The words were out of my mouth quicker than I'd expected but I'd been waiting so long to say them to all of the people who stood here now with me.

"I never wanted any of you to die for me." I shook my head slightly as my voice choked. So much death. What had it all even been for? Families were torn ap-

"And, Remus, your son?" I spun to look at my old professor with the realization that Teddy would grow up an orphan now. I couldn't be there for him, and I'd taken away his parents.

"Others will tell him what his mother and father died for. One day, he'll understand." I couldn't quite grasp how calm they all were about this, how much damage had been done by now...but I wished I could be just as calm.

"You'll stay with me?" I turned now to the entire circle with my lips in a straight line. I needed to go before I lost the will to just finish this. I was tired and cold as the winds shook the trees again in this damp and dreary place.

"Until the end." Dad nodded at me and I wanted to reach out just to feel a single part of him.

"And he won't be able to see you?" I raised a brow, eyeing each and every one of them. I wanted to remember their faces before this all ended.

"No." Sirius shook his head slightly and reached out. My eyes stopped on his hand out stretched as it pointed to my heart.

"We're here, you see." His hand acted as though it was pressed against my chest but I couldn't feel anything. Just the cold and the wet that seemed to hang in the air around us. I nodded at him nonetheless, swallowing as I decided it was time.

"Stay close to me." I nodded at them all as Sirius took a step back to rejoin all my loved ones in the circle once more. I glanced back at the edge of the trees in front of me and the castle that had always been my home.

"Always." My mother's voice was the one thing pushing my feet towards the trees and dozens of floating Dementors. At first I was ready to fight them but then I watched them merely float away as my circle of family seemed to make me invisible to them. I continued on towards the lights ahead of me with little thought.

It was time for me to die.


	2. (Pansy Parkinson Hippogriff Fic)

_**Prompt: Hippogriff: Write about someone who is hard to approach but is loyal once befriended.**_

 _ **Team: Ballycastle Bats**_

 _ **Position: Keeper**_

 _ **Word count: 2,997**_

 _ **AUTHORS NOTE:**_ _ **As this may be a little confusing, this is essentially**_ **a short story written up by an anonymous Hufflepuff that had been in the same year as Pansy Parkinson and published just as anonymously.**

* * *

Pansy Nott sat with her daughter in front of a crackling wood fire, showing her a book of pictures from a darker time and their origins. A time that she'd all but forgotten, before these happy years. The pair had nestled into a great big green velvet chair before opening the dusty book, curling into this chair with her child in her arms began their nightly ritual of dictating the past to her little one.

"Who are these people?" Amena leaned closer to a picture with a puzzled look in her large brown eyes. Her mother looked at it before turning her gaze back to her daughter's hair. She place the comb back at the crown of her daughter's head and continued to slowly work it through the tangles.

"Some of mum and dad's schoolmates."

The picture had contained morose teenaged Pansy standing with Draco Malfoy, Blaise Zabini, Theodore Nott, and Marcus Flint. All five teens wore a bored expression, glancing at the reserved party going on around them. They were dressed in formal robes and held thin-stemmed glasses that she presumed contain some expensive alcohol, courtesy of the Malfoys.

"Dad's there?" Amena turned her body around in her mother's lap to stare in wonder at her mum before glancing back at the teens who ignored the four year old.

"Mhm." She leaned around her, placing a finger on his youthful face. "He's right there." She declared with a soft expression of amusement on her face as her daughter's mouth dropped open in shock.

"But dad doesn't look like that! It can't be him!" Amena shook her head quickly, as though she could deny such a face being her own father's.

"What doesn't dad look like?" Theodore Nott poked his head in through the door that seperated the living room and his office in the Nott's house.

"A little wanker." Pansy grinned at her husband who rolled his eyes. He wasn't the stringy teenager from their days in Hogwarts any more. Instead he'd filled out the spindly limbs into a rather formidable man, one whose face might even be considered attractive if the viewer saw it in passing.

"Whats a wanker?" The child looked curiously between her mother and father's face and surmised that it must be a good thing with a smile of her own.

"It's not a good word, Amena." Her father shook his head, cautioning her from using it.

"You shouldn't say that to your friends unless you want to hurt their feelings." Her mother added in her own word of warning, twisting around the girl's frame to look her in the eyes as if that would convey the seriousness.

"But, what bad thing does it mean?" The child pondered that for a moment and seemed to come to the conclusion that it meant something rude, though she still wanted to know it's true definition.

"Um. Its a person that masturbates too much." Her father awkwardly provided the definition she'd been seeking and she accepted it with a nod.

Amena Brigid Nott was indeed a curious child and very clever, already able to piece together sentences of things such as the water cycle that bored her classmates in kindergarten. Her parents often felt that they couldn't have been prouder of their gir-

As the writer of this feel-good tale, indulge me in interrupting this entirely fictional domestic picture for a moment.

Surprised that it's entirely fictional?

I'd imagined so, considering this had been marked as an introversive non-fictional piece of writing.

Don't worry, it is.

But, that scene is merely the work of my sentimental imagination after I'd began writing this piece some years ago. I'm sure Pansy Parkinson does comb her daughter's hair and I do enjoy imagining that Theodore Nott, a man I find mildly attractive, would flee from the vicinity once his daughter began questioning things of a biological manner.

It's not that it isn't interesting of course, but the detailing of the picture itself isn't what makes the participants endearing to the viewer in my opinion. The details of actions themselves, the heroes and heroines overcoming a villainously destructive force, the warm crackling fire, a big soft green chair, they're simply words. Words are just pieces of a picture, but they are just as important as the image itself. Words, however, are a source of magic unto themselves, in my humble opinion.

Instead of continuing a scene in which a universally disliked witch and wizard deal with child-rearing, allow this sentimental writer to give that scene some "reasoning".

 _What "reasoning", and why is it in quotes? Why is the writer stopping to tell me this all of this nonsense?_

You might be yourself asking these very questions this moment, in fact the writer is 100% sure you've done just that. After all this is all just a voice in your head, isn't it?

So...what might the writer mean by "reasoning"? The writer means Pansy Parkinson's "reasoning", of course, dear reader. Her own personal reasoning for her personality, I'm sure is very different than what I'm about to suggest. The fact that I am merely suggesting is exactly why the word was in quotations in the first place. The following will be my own conjecture, birthed from my own experiences with the witch and some research into her past.

This research is why my suggestions are based on my belief that it is her past that has made her into the woman and mother she is today. Hadn't you begun wondering, before I interrupted the story above, as to why she was so loving?

That was nothing like what the world knows of Pansy Parkinson, the coward who had tried to give Harry Potter to Voldemort, right?

I must assume that you've heard the infamous tales of the Daily Prophet's journalist, Pansy Parkinson before. Otherwise, why would you read this piece that claims to demonstrate her redeeming qualities?

The story above is quite the opposite of her own brutal form of writing and her public image, don't you agree? She wasn't very well-liked in Hogwarts, and that same distaste appears to have followed her as an adult. She was ridiculously hard to approach but, much like a particularly hard mint I feel that inside the biting exterior, there was actually a very vulnerable center.

Are you utterly confused as to what my point is regarding the woman in popular opinion?

Let me explain, dear reader. Though, I do persuade you to expect much more of my informal rambling on tangents that you feel have no point in them.

While in my opinion some of that distaste is deserved, one must admit she was good at her job and she a journalist proud to do such a job. She was uniquely skilled at latching onto particular individuals that were rather popular in the public eye, before she'd pulled them apart and published their dirty secrets as her articles.

Merwyn Finwick, the dishonoured keeper of the Tutshill Tornados, is my first person of interest. He found his own secrets concerning a debilitating dependency on pepper-up potions, on the front page in an article by Pansy. Soon after, he found himself out of a job and in St Mungos.

Pansy had found information in Finwick's own angry team captain, and then confirmed it with a less than legal search through Finwick's belongings during a game in which the Tornados lost. During Pansy's time in the Daily Prophet, it appeared to it's faithful readers that no secret was safe if Pansy Parkinson was looking into it.

My belief is that it is her experience with secrets and rumours during her childhood and teens that makes her uniquely skilled. Many individuals at the Daily Prophet say that they miss her skills dearly, but that may be simple laziness. But, before we delve into the depths that makes up Pansy Parkinson, I offer another warning to you, dear reader.

This will not detail a charming and privileged life of a pure-blood, nor will this leave you with any sort of feelings even resembling happiness. Rather, I imagine that you will be quite depressed by the end of this.

Now that I've gotten rid of the readers with idiotically short attention spans, allow me to interest such a discriminating reader as yourself in the story that Pansy Parkinson was never given.

If there were, by chance, some god-like being that had written all of us into being as characters in stories, and I am including Muggles as well as us magical folk. I feel that it is my duty to criticise them. They'd given us a great number of amazing things like magic or a mother's unending love for her child.

Such things are indispensable, in my opinion. For a mother that loves her offspring will always protect them, even if they feel she shouldn't. As a mother myself I felt that her love is their guardian against all that is wrong in our world, and I must say that Lily Potter is the perfect example of this.

This is also part of why I feel that I must criticise this mythical writer. If they'd bothered creating Pansy Parkinson at all, why did they rob her of all of that? Or rather if there isn't such a being, then why did her parents deny her a simple thing such as love?

Pansy was the only daughter the Parkinsons, an older and conservative couple that enjoyed the status their blood gave them. While it is evident in their lavish home that she was well cared for as an only child, she was the last of the Parkinson family. One can only assume it is due to this blood based status that her parents weren't as affectionate with her.

Of course, many won't understand the true burden of being the only heir in one of the sacred 28 families and I'm not claiming that I do. I'm only a half-blooded Hufflepuff whose parents were ecstatic that I still visited them. However, I do know that burden deals with the long and upheld tradition of children's individual personalities and dreams being swallowed up whole, leaving behind only replicas of their parents.

This childhood shaped Pansy in more ways than simply acting as though she was above everyone else in Hogwarts. She was known to have a hideously shrill laugh but, I cannot confirm not deny that, dear reader.

Ironically, I can recall a time in which Pansy was desperate for friends. She tried speaking to the other houses in classes, and I'd personally met her in the library where she'd been working on an essay.

She'd been soft spoken, friendly, and excited to talk about a boy in my house I mentioned that was sweet enough to bring me cookies on Sundays. She was kind to me at that time and after I'd started this novel I have often wondered whether or not she'd have been different in our later years if she'd had a true friend.

Don't be mistaken by my rather sad detailing of her parent's cold attitude or my regret for her lack of friends, that was simply the way it was. This isn't my attempt at a call for sympathy nor is it me asking for forgiveness on her part.

Instead, this is to demonstrate that Pansy had to forcibly grow up in the number of hours after her outburst. She dealt well enough with her classmates ostracising her as a complete and united group, her house turned and left ratherly calmly before Voldemort launched his attack on Hogwarts.

She'd been terrified, and I couldn't blame her for being scared and panicking. She'd been given an ultimatum and she'd attempted to offer a single life in exchange for hers and hundreds of others with a shout and shaking hands. It sounds logical at first, one life for return for hundreds, but she will never be remembered as being logical. I feel that it was that exact moment, in the Great Hall, which caused the name Pansy Parkinson to be remembered with such revulsion and hatred.

When Harry Potter had submitted to Voldemort, he wasn't remembered as being logical. He was a hero simply because, instead of a single Slytherin trying to sacrifice him, he'd made the choice to save others and sacrificed himself. I do admit that when I'd heard her trying to force him to go, I felt that she was cowardly and possibly quite vile just as everyone else had but, this isn't about me.

This is Pansy's story. It's the thrilling tale of how she changed, matured, and took on an entirely different burden that she'd been born with in literally a few hours. She decided to take on the burden of the Hero.

What is that burden exactly? I imagine that Harry Potter or Hermione Granger would be better suited to dictate that but, for the sake of this novel, I've taken personal liberties in detailing what the burden of a hero means.

The burden dictates that you continue fighting when you're not sure you'll win. You fight with the hope you'll win if you continue, of course, but mainly you do so because you're loyal to your classmates and you know that they are doing the same for you. You bond over that shared loyalty to not stop fighting for your lives, and eventually you might even call each other friends.

 _Is that really being loyal? Or just that not wanting to die?_

Ah, those are good questions and you're quite right to raise them. I believe that the answer lies in what one does after death isn't a threat anymore. If one were to take part in a fight such as the one we'd been forced into, I imagine you could just leave as Draco Malfoy had done. But, Pansy Parkinson didn't do that.

Do you doubt me?

You shouldn't if you've lasted this long, dear reader.

She returned when the shields were failing and our classmate's bodies mixed with the rubble that was left of the school's attempts to protect us. In fact, it wasn't just her that had returned, I saw several Slytherins during the battle. However, I can only vouch for her presence when she'd had my back after the shields began to fail and the Voldemort's followers began pushing their way in.

I imagine that quite a few of my readers will be looking for some sort of evidence that she hadn't ran, and I can offer nothing tangible. I can only offer you my own memory of looking over my shoulder and finding her right there, deflecting curses as I did the same for her.

I'd spoke with her later, after the curses had stopped flying over our heads and the walls stopped crumbling. She was just as sweet and kind as I'd remembered but, her eyes weren't as bright as they'd been that night in the library. Her skin was pale, her hair was cropped, and she looked tired but not in the physical sense of the word.

From my position, and please do keep in mind that I was closer to a piece of furniture than an actual person in most of my Hogwarts years, it'd seemed that no one had ever stopped to ask if she was okay. I don't know if I'd ever considered asking her before I saw her protecting me just as I protected her, I think everyone assumed she lacked the ability to feel.

She'd become abrasive in every sense of the word the year after she'd been sorted into Slytherin and if I had to guess, it was thanks to the never ending rumours circulating. I'd heard a few: she'd slept with every boy in Slytherin, she was cheated on by Draco Malfoy.

After I'd begun looking into her past, I found myself considering scrapping this entire thing altogether when she didn't respond to my letters full of questions and notifying her as to what my book would be about. It felt like these were the possible reasons for why she wasn't responding and why she and Malfoy had never married.

So many years had passed since then and I supposed she didn't want to speak with me anymore. It doesn't matter how many fancy words I string together to illicit the images of warmth and love, or my attempts to acknowledge a reader's potential question. Her story, the one she'd never truly gotten, was sad and incredibly short on paper.

She'd written a few articles for the Daily Prophet as I mentioned earlier but after the birth of her daughter, she'd left. I like to imagine that she'd done it specifically for her daughter but I imagined it was to do with the boxes of dead rats she kept receiving.

Outside of the media, it was even shorter.

She married Theodore Nott in 2007.

They'd had a daughter in 2008.

Theodore Nott was arrested by Harry Potter in 2020.

That is all, dear reader.

That is all there is to say about the woman who saved my life during the Battle of Hogwarts.


End file.
